If your product contains even trace levels of pesticide residue, and you are calling it ‘100% natural’, are you at risk of a false advertising lawsuit? New complaints filed against Post Foods – mirroring lawsuits filed in March vs Quaker Oats – suggest the answer is yes.

The lawsuits – filed in the district of Columbia, New York and California – acknowledged that the trace levels of glyphosate in selected Post Shredded Wheat products* (0.18 parts per million) are significantly below the Environmental Protection Agency’s legally permitted threshhold of 30ppm for cereal grains, but argue that reasonable consumers would not expect to see glyphosate residues at any level in wheat labeled as ‘100% natural’.

Consumers thing natural should mean no pesticide residues, period, argues plaintiff

In the complaint ** filed in New York (Robert Stephenson et al vs Post Foods LLC and Post Holdings Inc 1:16-cv-03396), the plaintiff argues: “Shredded Wheat is not “100% Natural,” but instead contains the chemical glyphosate, a potent herbicide that last year was declared a probable human carcinogen by the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO).

“When a product purports to be ‘100% natural’ consumers not only are willing to pay more for the product, they expect it to be pesticide free.”

It goes on to cite a 2014 phone survey by Consumer Reports showing that 66% of the 1,004 consumers polled believed that a ‘natural’ label on packaged and processed foods meant that ‘no toxic pesticides were used’ and that 86% believed that a ‘natural’ label on packaged and processed foods should mean that ‘no toxic pesticides were used.’